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"Each individual should allow reason to guide his conduct, or like an animal, he will need to be led by a leash."

Diogenes of Sinope

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Thousand Flowers tapestry (15th Century) - Beaune, France (detail)

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Ban the hammer

The government of Australia should perhaps follow Canada's example and establish a National Hammer Registry after a Supreme Court judge in Brisbane suggested making carrying a hammer a criminal offence:

In the Supreme Court in Brisbane, Justice Ros Atkinson was taking submissions on the second day of a hearing in which eight men are being sentenced for the bashing death of rugby league star Jonathan Thurston's uncle Richard Saunders.

Prosecutor Todd Fuller, SC, and defence lawyers for the four men and four juveniles completed their submissions on sentence today.

Mr Fuller asked for sentences ranging from 10 years, with an automatic serious violent offence classification meaning eight years must be served, to five years detention with an immediate release order after time served.

Justice Atkinson will sentence all eight on Thursday.

During submissions for a juvenile offender, Justice Atkinson noted that while he was not the one to use the hammer in the attack the juvenile had been carrying a hammer before the events of the night.

"It is such a dangerous thing to do and it is almost inevitable that somebody would be hurt," she said.

Justice Atkinson asked Mr Fuller if there should be legislative reform to make carrying a hammer in such circumstances an offence.

Maybe they could compromise and just register claw hammers or hammers capable of driving nails larger than three inches. After all, if it saves one life ...

4 comments:

It was almost inevitable that carrying a hammer would lead to violence? Hmm. For her sake I genuinely hope she meant to say that it was inevitable that once there was a fight the hammer would be used. That doesn't seem to be the context, though.

I have a stapler next to my computer. Do you suppose it's okay there, or just to be safe, should I the staples out and lock it in a cupboard?

In western society we live in a backwards and retarded age instead of a modern one. We now treat adults as toddlers. Responsible parents and adults understand the need to child-proof the environment of a toddlers in keeping things that could harm him out of his reach. It used to be that we treated adults differently by holding them, not things they use, responsible.

Words of wisdom ...

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted one will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

John Gardner

As we neared our sixties the cloaks we had wrapped about our essential selves were wearing thin.

Robertson Davies - Fifth Business

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking.

Joshua Reynolds

Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Thomas Paine

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Galileo

The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honourable.

F.A. Hayek

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing the truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of the truth.

H.P. Lovecraft

In the country, no one can hear you scream. In the city, people hear you scream but no one cares.

Tom Waits

It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.

Alexis de Toqueville

Liberals who celebrate tolerance of other views always seem surprised that there are other views.

William F. Buckley

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful, good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean: more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Mark Twain

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